Nevertheless, they are vital to the Oriental, and life or death have often hung upon their manifestations. All present on this occasion felt its significance. The movements of the officer, as he entered the gorgeous apartment, amid the splendid trains of the two Emperors, were watched with great anxiety; if he presented the coffee first to his own master, the furious conqueror, before whom the sovereign of India and all his courtiers trembled, might order him to instant execution; if he presented it to Nadir first, he would certainly insult his own sovereign out of fear of the stranger. To the astonishment of all, he walked up, with a steady step, direct to his own master. “I cannot,” said he, “aspire to the honor of presenting the cup to the king of kings, your majesty's honored guest, nor would your majesty wish that any hand but your own should do so.” The Emperor took the cup from the golden salver, and presented it to Nadir Shah, who said with a smile as he took it: “Had all your officers known and done their duty like this man, you had never, my good cousin, seen me and my Kuzul Bashus at Delhi. Take care of him for your own sake, and get around you as many like him as you can.”
All these are now dust—the oppressor and the oppressed gone to their account before God; but the spirit of bigotry, and recklessness of human suffering and life, engendered by the Moslem creed, clung to the place until its gems ceased to shine, and its glory was extinguished forever. For here, too, sat its last occupant—this man whose portrait we present, Mohammed Suraj-oo-deen—on the 12th of May, 1857, and issued those orders under which England's embassador and his chaplain, with every Christian whom they could find in Delhi, male and female, native or European, were butchered amid barbarities the enormity of which has never been exceeded by any of the edicts of cruelty which have gone forth, even from the Dewan Khass.
Humanity heaves a sigh of relief to know that this is the last. The house of Tamerlane is no more; their Dewan Khass is in ruins; their pomp, and glory, and power, have gone down to the grave forever.
